At-large D.C. Councilman Vincent Orange has argued the city doesn’t need the new independent ethics and open-government accountability board proposed by Muriel Bowser and advocated by several of her colleagues. He believes that the recent nomination by Mayor Vincent C. Gray of former City Auditor Deborah Nichols as chairwoman of the Board of Elections and Ethics has eliminated the need for any new structure. I’m not so sure Nichols should lead the BOEE. And I am even less sanguine about the role she might play creating a new ethics regime and culture in the District.
As city auditor from 1983 to 2011, Nichols was part of the council structure. She was nominated by the chairman and approved by the legislature; it determined her budget — not the mayor.
Nichols was the council’s personal bulldog, charged with sniffing and biting the executive branch. While she was good at her job, she sometimes played wicked politics, delivering sound bites and reports when legislators needed them most, or withholding reports when they might do serious damage.
She once sat on an audit for more than a year because it was critical of influential Chief Technology Officer Suzanne Peck and Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi’s operations. In 2005, to satisfy Orange, who then represented Ward 5, Nichols offered details of an audit she had not even completed during a public hearing.
Frequently, Nichols released her most sensational audit reports during budget season. It appeared their distribution was timed to help secure maximum funding for her office and to protect her territory, which sometimes came under attack from the inspector general, who saw her operation as redundant.
Shaping an ethics regime around a favored personality is the sure path to trouble and maintaining the status quo. Already, District elected officials have seemed paralyzed by relationships, preventing them, in some instances, from acting in the best interest of the city.
Consider, for example, that neither the executive nor legislative branch has called for Harry Thomas Jr.’s resignation, despite tangible evidence of wrongdoing presented clearly by the city’s own attorney general, Irvin B. Nathan. Instead, Gray and the majority of legislators have talked about relationships and associations: they have known Thomas since high school; they knew his daddy, who was also a councilman; they know and respect his mother, a former public school principal.
The council’s personal history with the Thomas family has cast members as the three monkeys — hearing, seeing and speaking no evil. Meanwhile, the city’s image has continued to be severely damaged and the public trust may be beyond restoration.
Orange likes Nichols; a lot of people do. I get that. But, sometimes change requires a clean and unequivocal break from the past.
Truth be told, the District doesn’t need someone who has mastered the art of winning influential friends. It needs an independent arbiter, unlikely to be seduced by politics but willing, when necessary, to make enemies in pursuit of high ethical standards.
Jonetta Rose Barras’ column appears on Monday and Wednesday. She can be reached at [email protected].
